Sies + Höke is pleased to present Hansjoerg Dobliar's (*1972) first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Concentric beams, tapering black planes, overlapping colored ellipses, rhombi, tetrahedra and crystal shapes: Dobliar's painting is informed by geometric abstraction. The numerous layers of acrylic, oil and spray paint are, however, often based on representational forms. Applied with "perfect lousiness" , dripping paint and expressive brushwork, Dobliar develops his forms partly from simple motifs such as trees, houses and mountains, superimposes them with perspective shifts, and thus achieves a precise balance between representation and alienation. Partially obscured clippings from magazines of the 1960s and 70s, which the artist uses as the basis for many of his works on paper, can also be seen as the key to the contents of his canvases. They hint at Dobliar's interest in the production of irrational and fantastic imagery and explain his proximity to both Romanticism's excessive sensitivity and the bizarre reality distortions of the horror and science fiction genres.

Instead of limiting his work to canvas and paper, Dobliar repeatedly works with alternative image supports, as well as with entire rooms whose walls he paints or applies wallpaper on, and which he darkens or divides up. For Paranoid Landscape, the artist develops three different "stagings", whose unifying element is the color black, adding an element of rhythm throughout the exhibition.

In the front gallery a great dark curtain obscures the windows, arching into the room and serving simultaneously as partition and hanging space. Inside in the gloomy light, canvasses showing disjointed flowers and abstract beaming landscapes appear haunting and obsessive. On the mezzanine floor Dobliar shows a thematically grouped series of painted magazine pages: mainly portraits and interiors. They are installed ontop of a large wall painting of simple geometric shapes, which, instead of being flawless and formalistic, appear distorted, washed out, semi-transparent and overlapping each other. This process of imposing abstraction, which is also to be found in his works on paper, demonstrates Dobliar's artistic appropriation of both experienced and mediated reality.

In the upper gallery space a series of small-format paintings is presented on a wallpaper-like background created from black and white portraits of Maria Callas, Marilyn Monroe and Romy Schneider. Glowing through thin layers of translucent spray paint, the faces of these women, whose public persona were defined by private tragedies, fascinate not only for their beauty, but also for the threat of their unavoidable misfortunes. The small paintings installed on this backdrop capture in their compositions the interaction of depth and flatness, shape and surface. Together they form a stylized landscape, fragments of an irresolvable contradiction in the shadow of an overwhelming disaster.